Ensemble 9
PROGRESSING WITH ROPES? … MAPPING … ?
1989-2021
Each drawing: 60"x40"
Tableau: 85"x156"x2"
Today October 2023 the “Saut du Doubs”is totally dry !!
This 32 Gorenflo Gap map identifies every tree to which a rope was attached. Blue ropes are the lowest. Yellow ropes are strung from the base of trees on the ridge of the cove and are only workable during the winter. All of them are shot horizontally across the cove. Red ropes are design conscious, mark and honor an Entrance tree, a King Tree, an Exit tree, a Merry-goround tree. A Green rope draws a triangle… Trees are yellow poplar, oak, locust, honey-locust, dogwood, pine, maple, cherry and ash tree, … The dotted lines are trails, mowed anew in the cove, reclaimed or created in the forest.
The map does not show a pre-existing plan. It is a working document, growing as it goes. It is now an important trace of this temporary work.
WHO WORKED THERE?
People around Azule, Doug Wheelock, Harold Finley, Dave Shafer, Camille Shafer…, Jean Marie, People from the Fast & French cafe, mainly William Stancil aka WIST, Steve Wenzel aka STWE, a photographer/arborist, and Dean Lentz aka DELE, a musician, long-term assistant full of curiosity. Rhapsode Yves Gaudin helped me reimagine “My Little Corner” (see Speaker 8 further below) after a winter storm destroyed its configuration.
Thank you Camille and Dave for the offer of your cove and your trust in me.
Four years to shape this! Working so many times, side by side, on the site, generated deep exchanges on needs, joy, discoveries, smells, all types of perceptions, in a forest considered more or less friendly as “…leaflet three means misery…”
What my hand did snapping mason lines across the 3 drawings of Ensemble 9 is similar to what my eye did to horizontally shoot a rope across a 700 foot wide cove. However it was really difficult to film and photograph 1/4″ thin ropes in an 8 acre mountain landscape.
There are many existing collages on canvas. Maybe one day they will be installed together.
A film on 32 Gorenflo Gap may be fully edited, from aged Hi8 or VHS amateur standards. As a work on perception it really needed better video equipment.
The sound recordings are still OK though.
The 32 Gorenflo Gap outdoor installation incorporated 10 sound stations. Language and sound were media Jean-Marie and I had used to communicate across the Atlantic ocean and between Canadian States. Oddly the deep silence of the Azule cove in the Appalachian forest brought about sounds and words that visitors discovered while walking in this temporary park. Their physicality and visibility were just as present.
Speakers proposed different approaches to listening, different positions of the body.
Speaker 1 was on a post, at the entrance of the cove. I still hear the voice of Hugh DesMarais warning us of dangers, “…Leaflet three means misery…”
Speaker 2 was on a tree. Coming from under a straw-hat suspended from a locust tree, the voice of a guide spoke of the French-American couple (Camille and Dave) which moved here in 1972; their house “growing out of the log cabin of the last doctor in Bluff…”; of the non-profit association Camille, Dave, Jean-Marie and I planned together, the one that would inherit the estate, originally called Azule Visiting Artists Place… now known as AZULE, a 501(c)3. Finally the guide talked of my/our attempts “to bring the sky down…, to anchor our feet…”
Speaker 3 was on the ground. This oasis brought music, snores and French/English descriptions of the area. And also the moon with the help of Aristide Bruant and his song Le Chat Noir. Why? I can’t remember!
Speaker 4 was broadcasting among small rocks on the edge of a trail. It talked about all kinds of measurement units, so many that they turned into a song and a poem (See Ensemble 14).
Speaker 5 gives us to hear “Dear Mom” (a letter to my Mom), while sitting on a rocking chair.
3 Speakers 6 were hidden. It was as if locusts, grasshoppers or cicadas were musing at our ankles.
Speaker 7 offered multi-lingual gibberish about the arts, while reaching a big boulder.
Speaker 8 “My Little Corner” was on a fallen log. One could sit next to it to hear my notes, worries, questions and those of my collaborators.
Destruction of 33 Gorenflo Gap
I never had the opportunity to accomplish another Blue Rope project and I regret it. But I know what it brought to future projects: some daring and audacity.
The use of ropes started indoors in Montreal (left and above: MFA exhibition at Concordia University 1982) continued with Gorenflo Gap (1989-93) and The Charleston/Atlanta/Alaska Challenge (large picture above), Old City Jail, Charleston 1999-2000.
It continued in 2004 as part of CHANGING THE BEAT (below in 2004), an experiment in collaboration across disciplines, audience, community building.
CHANGING THE BEAT
SATURDAY & SUNDAY APRIL 23RD & 24TH, 2005
Core Participants
Ahleuchatistas, a group of three contemporary musicians from Asheville NC
Geoff Cormier collaborates on puppetry, music and stage work, Charleston SC
Omari Fox, a visual artist and poet from Columbia SC
Roederick, a spoken word artist from Columbia SC
Olive Dance Company, five Hip Hop dancers, from Philadelphia PA
Gwylene Gallimard, a visual artist from Charleston SC
Arianne King Comer, a fiber artist from St Helena SC
John Wright, a visual artist, teacher at Benedict College, SC
Kim Ledee, a visual artist, teacher at SCSU in Orangeburg SC
Core Observers
Gretchen Barbatsis, ethnologist and storyteller
Lasheia Oubre, educator
Martha Hunt, artist
Donald Davis, student and photographer
Core Facilitators
Carlton Turner, program director of ROOTS; main presenter of this program.
Latonnya Wallace, co-manager of Fast & French, Inc; the coordinator
Julia Gilkerson, art administration student; the co-coordinator
Jean-Marie Mauclet, sculptor/ installation artist/furniture maker; the prop advisor.
Exploring Collaboration
CHANGING THE BEAT is an EXPERIMENT IN COLLABORATIVE WORK among artists of different disciplines and backgrounds. It also is an experiment in AUDIENCE BUILDING. The deepest purpose is to USE THE ARTS AS A TOOL FOR COMMUNITY BUILDING. That is to convey, stimulate, inspire, ignite a sense of social involvement and responsibility. For participants, it is a rare chance to seriously study unfamiliar artistic approaches. To exchange professional experiences. To situate and weigh the place of individualism within a temporary, random grouping of people. To see how far the arts can carry their unique potential for inventiveness, imagination, liberation….
Building the Audience
The 1st SPECTATORS for the Saturday presentation are chosen for their interest and knowledgeability in the arts to bring us a critical response. Those guests will be also in charge of inviting a 2nd TIER of SPECTATORS for the final presentation and discussion on Sunday. Those two tiers of spectators will be asked to participate in the organization of the final potluck dinner. It is so important that the people we invite be “very special guests”. Their input will enrich our content and boost our sense that audience is not always passive, to be entertained, to be educated, but part of the creative process.
Where:
CHARLESTON RUTLEDGE COMMUNITY CENTER, corner of Rutledge Avenue and Carolina St. in Charleston; thanks to the Humanity Foundation.
APRIL 23-24 2005
At the end, there were three full amazing productions:
"CURVES", "SHADOW", and "BLACK WIDOW"
by A CHARLESTON ROOTS RHIZOME COLLABORATIVE EXPERIENCE
Process
(1) In an introductory session, members of the core, whether individuals or groups, will show their work to one another, for the purpose of establishing a professional level of understanding and communication.
(2) Then, “the rules of the game” will be presented by and discussed with the facilitator: forming random, interdisciplinary work groups among participants, which will have “the day” to come up with an original work of art or an outlined project to be presented publicly at the end of the program.
(3) Each work group, as it develops its project, is followed by an observer, whose job it is to record the history of the group, its ethnology.
(4) Presentation of the work to the “first tier” of spectators, made of folks chosen by the core for their interest and knowledgeability in the fields of the art-in-community field.
(5) Critical session and audience participation around the presentation.
(6) The work groups reconvene and integrate some of the first tier spectators to further work on their project.
(7) The final piece is shown to an audience picked by core and first-tier.
(8) Critical session and opening to the community at large with possibility to expand on the work done.
(9) The observers will propose their comments and develop within a month of the even a memory publication.
Please note that there is no time line yet for these activities. Ideally, the program should develop on a two-day session: the first day would cover (1) to (5), the second day (6) to (9).
Many Thanks To
Alternate ROOTS
Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs
Expansion Arts program from the Coastal Community Foundation
The Charleston Humanity Foundation.
Schedule of Events
SATURDAY APRIL 23RD:
9:00am – Breakfast introduction of participants, documenters, and facilitators.
9:30am – Inventory of talents, where participants have 15 minutes each or per group to show what they are bringing to the table. Tour of facilities. Breakup in work groups. Groups choose their workspace.
Noon to 5:00pm – Food is brought in and will be available all day. The food area may be best used for individual breaks, consultation with documenters, other groups and with facilitators.
6:00pm – The first tier of audience arrives and shares a meal with participants.
7:00pm – Each group presents a “rough draft” of its day’s work. Around 15 minutes of presentation and 10 minutes of “critical response”, as facilitator sees fit. At the end of this session, members of the first tier of audience will be invited to come back the next morning to participate.
Later – Informal gathering at Gwylène and Jean-Marie’s place. Ask for directions.
SUNDAY APRIL 24TH:
10:30am – Breakfast. Facilitator summarizes the work of yesterday and defines that of today. Food area will be available at will.
11:00am – Groups with 1st tier audience turn their rough into a “piece”.
4:00pm – The 2nd tier of audience comes in. Presentation of the finished works, “critical response” and documenters’ comments.
6:00pm – Potluck with all audiences.
7:00pm – Facilitator will summarize the week-end. And then: Jam session, where participants will regroup in their original or new formations and show their talents. Jam session is open to more audience.
10:00pm – It’s over folks! Thank you for a great week-end.
And a rope installation at Fast & French, created by its present owner Lawrence Mitchell (and friends I guess).